Karina Bland, Founder of Bangerooo, Shares How To Find Your Authentic Self And Create Your Own World & Recognizable Style
Finding your authentic self is something that every creator goes through.
It’s one of the greatest challenges or hurdles to overcome and once you find your authentic self and recognizable style then your art career will grow.
Self-expression is a journey.
If you want to be yourself you need to stop caring about other people’s thoughts about you. The truth is, if you care about being judged then that’ll affect how you create.
True creation should have no barriers.
Karina Bland, founder of Bangerooo, redefines digital art with her creations that encompasses the beauty of weed, female sexuality, and aliens, aliens, and more aliens.
Why Aliens?
Well, Karina believes that people should have to have the ability to celebrate and relate to your art. Aliens are an entity that everyone can relate to regardless of race, gender, body, type, etc.
People identify with them and see themselves in them. Aliens are a great way to relate with others and use them as a vehicle to share messages without friction. Her brand provides a safe space regardless of race, gender, or body types.
Inspired by the weird and abnormal, Karina has grown Bangerooo into one of the most-followed psychedelic digital art pages with over 150,000 followers.
Karina says, “Developing a style first step is to start and practice regularly. Ideally you should be motivated by the act of creation and not necessarily on social acceptance or social relevance. Yes it’s important when building a career and business, however true art comes from the joy of creating itself. If you enjoy creating the content then you will create your own style and gain recognition. If you are motivated by the wrong things and do not genuinely enjoy what you do then you will burn out and not have a long career. The only way to have a fulfilled life is to love what you do.”
Bored with censored art, Karina, a self-taught digital artist and engineer, started making what she calls “in your face” fashion and accessories that defy the limits of digital art and animation on social media. With new Instagram features, like reels and filters Bangerooo is more interactive than ever before leading audience members down a rabbit hole to a 420 alternate dimension full of naked smoking aliens!
A switch flipped for Karina during an experience away when she volunteered to plant 200,000 trees and was judged by others because of her appearance, demeanor, and hard work ethic. People would make fun of her and ostracize her for doing good work that felt intimidating to others.
She was not used to being judged and going through this experience taught her that she did not need to worry about the judgement of others. Her breakthrough moment occurred when she realized that if you’re feeling influenced about something that is outside of your control then your mind should just stop thinking about it because you should only work about things that are completely in your control. If the opinions of others affect you then that’s your prerogative, instead you can choose to remove them from your life and not care about them.
Below Karina shares her pieces of advice to generate ideas and find your recognizable style:
- Create user friendly content.
Create pieces of art that speak to people. There needs to be meaning.
Stores are censored. Fashion forward brand that is direct to consumers. Rainbows and Sex.
2. Mix concepts that go together.
She loves to juxtapose things that go together or don’t go together to create humor or make something meaningful. Motif like joints or psychedelic tap into new markets. Use profanity in a tasteful way. Themes like drugs, sex, aliens, feminism.
3. Expose yourself to many things.
Most ideas come from external stimuli. When you expose yourself to as many things as possible then you can generate new ideas. Ideas and thoughts are everywhere you look — Ideas build off collective human consciousness.
4. Develop your recognizable style.
Find ideas that inspire you from other artists and themes and continue to massage the idea until it just hits you and you feel a desire to create.
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The path to finding your authentic style is an individual journey that you must take alone. As you walk along your journey you will develop a recognizable style that you can use to create new worlds and build an organic audience who cares about you because they appreciate your aesthetic and style.
Remember, growth takes patience and you should never create just to impress others and achieve results. If you are always results oriented then you will lose faith and focus if your art does not perform the way you would like. Instead, fall in love with the creation process no matter the result.
Doing this secures that you will have longevity and never burn out. Commit to the process and it will be a rewarding experience.
